


Never Meanin' No Harm

by verucasalt123



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Exhaustion, Fights, Gen, Good Intentions, Marid, Sam's GodHole, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:06:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28182114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verucasalt123/pseuds/verucasalt123
Summary: He doesn’t have time to listen to voicemail, but he’s got five missed calls from Cas and one from Eileen. Zero from Sam. Dean knows exactly what that means.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24
Collections: Supernatural Summergen 2020





	Never Meanin' No Harm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sakarrie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakarrie/gifts).



> A/N: Please do not read any Castiel-bashing into this story. I love Cas dearly, I just think Dean would be mad about the choices he made in this episode.
> 
> Also, the prompt for this story is: _*SPOILERS FOR 15x07 Last Call* So remember how Cas called Dean like a million times saying that Sam was dying and they spent like 5 seconds on his reaction? I'd love to explore that a bit more. Either in canon divergence where Dean gets the calls and comes home in a panic or by adding a missing scene(s) to the episode where we see Dean getting the phone calls and/or we see him talking to Sam about it after. Honestly, I'm not actually that picky here. I just want some worried Dean to go along with the hurt Sam. (;_

_Straightening the curves, flattening the hills_   
_Someday the mountain might get ‘em but the law never will_

Dean needs a minute. Or two. Maybe five. He’s just killed a monster he’s never even heard of, and he also killed someone who used to be his friend. He’s been up all night, and that’s not getting any easier to bounce back from past forty. If he wasn’t worried about the scene, he’d curl up right here and sleep on the bloody floor next to Lee’s corpse and the monster head. 

Of course, in hindsight, Dean can pick out the moments of shady behavior from Lee and he’s angry with himself for not catching on earlier. Seriously, what bar collects your cell phone when you walk in the door? Wouldn’t they want their customers writing Yelp reviews? Checking in on Facebook? Posting videos of their friends doing karaoke? (Dean knows all of these things because...Sam.) 

He’s also hung over, and doesn’t even want to think about how much alcohol he consumed last night. He’d had the spins until Lee filled him in on how this monster was going to drink him. Going on a bender is another thing you don’t quickly recover from at his age. His whole body hurts.

Digging through the mess of this bar, Dean finds the basket. He has about two minutes of battery life left, just long enough to see one text from Cas with a curt _call when you can_. He doesn’t have time to listen to voicemail, but he’s got five missed calls from Cas and one from Eileen. Zero from Sam. Dean knows exactly what that means. He wastes time shouting profanities into the void, then manages to type and send _on my way_ before the screen goes dark. For all the good that will do them, considering no one knows how far away he is. 

It’s fine. He’ll charge the phone in the car. 

Except there’s no charger in the car. 

And not a single functioning burner phone in the glove box.

God damn it. Or something. _Something_ damn it.

The drive from Texhoma to the bunker ought to be close to seven hours. That’s about how long it took him to get here, anyway, but on the way here he hadn’t been in a rush to find out whether or not God had decided to smite his brother today. That adds a certain sense of urgency. Dean stays off US 54 and sticks to back roads, stopping only once to take a piss and pick up a large sludgy black coffee while gas is pumped into the car. Coffee is both everything he needs and the last thing he needs, but this is his life. His desperate need of sleep seems to have disappeared. 

The return trip takes six hours and twenty minutes. He had pushed his Baby as hard as he could. She deserves and will receive a hero’s welcome - tuneup, inside detailing, wash, wax. It’s a symbiotic relationship. She does this for Dean, he does that for her. But that can all wait until he finds out what the hell is going on with Sam. 

He manages to get just the very first part of the story out of Cas before he has to walk away for a moment. Does Cas go looking for ways to damage their friendship these days? And yeah, there are good intentions, with Cas there are _always_ good intentions.

What a world it would be if everyone just listened to Dean all the time. Dean says do the thing, you do the thing, Dean says don’t do the thing, you don’t do the thing. It’s very simple and he’s not sure why the people in his life can’t manage it.

The last thing Sam needs is yet another serious head wound. He’s gonna end up with that thing that boxers and football players get that makes them lose control of their mental faculties because their brain has been abused so much. 

So right, Cas thought _probing_ the God-inflicted gunshot wound might reveal Chuck’s location or some other important piece of intel that might help to defeat Him. Clearly, there’s a whole lot more to this story, but Dean can hear it later. He wants to know. He always wants to know everything because of course he does, because it’s Sam, but right now he just needs to get eyes on his brother.

He makes his way to the infirmary. Sam’s conscious but he looks weak. Which is unacceptable. Honestly, Dean doesn’t know a single human being on this planet who’s stronger than Sam in any conceivable way. Anything that can make him look weak is very, very bad news. He tamps down the urge to punch Castiel in the face.

Eileen is sitting on a chair next to the bed looking worried and holding a washcloth to Sam’s head like he’s got a fever or something. Sam senses his presence in the room without looking his way and just gets out a half-whispered, “Dean?”

Heading over to the bed, Dean quietly answers, “Yeah Sammy, it’s me.” Eileen’s a bright woman, instantly vacating her post by the bed to relinquish it to Dean. 

Sam’s eyes dart all around the infirmary, and Dean instinctively moves into a protective position so he’s almost completely in front of him. There’s no danger in this room (excepting Cas and his always very good intentions). When Sam’s eyes start to focus a bit more, Dean tells him, “Heard you knocked your head against something hard again, man. I really wish you’d cut that out.”

From Sam, Dean gets a huffed breath and the hint of a smile, and he feels less useless immediately. “Jesus, Sam, my phone battery died and I knew there was something wrong but I didn’t know what it was and I was scared to death and I tore up every back road between the Texas/Oklahoma line and Lebanon to get home.” If there’s any place Dean can manage to admit being scared, it’s here with Sam. 

“I’m gonna be fine, Dean. And I think - I’m pretty sure I learned some things, or saw some things, that can help us beat Chuck.”

Dean’s taken aback, and he’s anxious to hear about this, but he can also recognize when Sam needs to rest. “You can tell me all about it, Sammy, but try to get a little sleep for now, okay?”

It’s almost a shock when Sam closes his eyes and acquiesces immediately.

They all file out into the kitchen so Dean can be filled in on everything that he missed. He almost loses it right away hearing about the call to Sergei. What an asshole, why the hell would Cas ever call him again after what happened last time? They had needed some mysticism, though, and it was pretty scary to realize that without Rowena, Sergei is next on their list. 

From the way the story is told, Cas had been kind of bad-ass, and so had Eileen for that matter. Dean could definitely see her taking Sergei out if she was pissed enough. Hell, he could imagine Eileen taking _him_ out if she was pissed enough. 

Would Apocalypse World Bobby really have murdered an innocent girl in cold blood? Maybe. Dean barely knows that guy. 

But Cas - it’s like getting a glimpse of that creature he’d met right after Hell, all righteous and absolute and terrifying like he used to be. Also with a God-related mission that kept him from forming healthy emotional bonds with human beings.

In the end, they’re left with more questions than answers. Was there a key to Death’s reading room in the bunker somewhere? What about all of this soul-stretching and soul-snapping? Dean doesn’t like even the inference that Sam could be soulless again. If only Dean had been here when Cas showed up with his bright idea about the wound. But if he’s being honest, Sam would have agreed to it anyway, no matter what kind of objections Dean would have raised. 

For right now, Dean can take comfort in knowing Sam is as safe as it’s possible for any of them to be, ever. He might even get some sleep tonight.


End file.
